The technology group Wärtsilä, Tieto, St1, Fortum and Demos Helsinki have today introduced their Innovation Community initiative aimed at drastically accelerating the global energy sector’s transition to cleaner, more environmentally sustainable energy generation.

Innovation Community is creating a forum for restructuring the roles and positions of the energy chain players. This will provide an arena in which to study, improve, experiment, validate, and bring to market innovations that challenge current energy system paradigms. The business-driven, action-oriented, and ambitious programme intends to seize and drive new opportunities emerging with the transition towards clean energy production.

“We are launching this initiative in an effort to solve the big energy challenges. By establishing an open innovation environment, our ambition is to deliver global scale solutions. By working together with the community partners, we can achieve more and we can do it faster. Collaboration over competition is our guiding principle,” commented Matti Rautkivi, Director, Sales & Marketing, Wärtsilä Energy Solutions.

The community has been established based on building trust and facilitating the challenging first steps for collaboration between its members. The goals include building a vision and roadmap for accelerating the transition to renewable energy sources, and experimenting and bringing to market promising new initiatives. The programme will also provide a platform for multi-stakeholder collaboration with corporations, startups, universities, NGOs, and the public sector through dialogue, open events, and jointly organized projects.

Matti Rautkivi added: “There is universal understanding that the world needs to limit global warming by a maximum of 1.5 degrees C. If this is to be realised, the energy sector must play a far greater role in abating greenhouse gas emissions. Wärtsilä has established a Smart Energy approach aimed at a 100 percent renewable energy future. This Innovation Community project will build on this commitment.”

The announcement of this initiative was made in Helsinki at the Slush exhibition, the world’s leading startup event.

Wärtsilä Energy Solutions in brief Wärtsilä Energy Solutions is leading the transition towards a 100% renewable energy future. As an Energy System Integrator, we understand, design, build and serve optimal power systems for future generations. Our offering includes ultra-flexible internal combustion engine-based power plants, hybridised solar power plants, energy storage & integration solutions, as well as gas to power systems. Wärtsilä’s solutions provide the needed flexibility to integrate renewables and secure power system reliability. Wärtsilä has 68 GW of installed power plant capacity in 177 countries around the world.www.wartsila.com/energy

Wärtsilä in briefWärtsilä is a global leader in smart technologies and complete lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. By emphasising sustainable innovation, total efficiency and data analytics, Wärtsilä maximises the environmental and economic performance of the vessels and power plants of its customers. In 2017, Wärtsilä’s net sales totalled EUR 4.9 billion with approximately 18,000 employees. The company has operations in over 200 locations in more than 80 countries around the world. Wärtsilä is listed on Nasdaq Helsinki.www.wartsila.com

About Wärtsilä

Wärtsilä is a global leader in smart technologies and complete lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. By emphasising sustainable innovation, total efficiency and data analytics, Wärtsilä maximises the environmental and economic performance of the vessels and power plants of its customers.